Dies The Fire

Chapter Thirteen

L owell, Idaho, had a sign at the outskirts: population 24- with the 24 crossed out, and "23" written beside it.

The joke was one from before things Changed.

The tiny hamlet sat at the junction of the Lochsa and the Clearwater; in normal times it was a jumping-off point for the wilderness areas around, and for white-water rafting. Now half a dozen of its residents stood across the roadway; three of them had hunting bows, the others axes or baseball bats.

Havel reined in his horse and flung up his right hand with the fist clenched. He could hear Angelica's whoa to her team, and the hoof-falls of the rest behind him ceased, dying away to an occasional clop or crunch as a horse shifted in place.

"Afternoon," he said.

"Afternoon," the burly middle-aged man who seemed to be the leader said. " Lot of road people already been through."

Road people? Havel thought. Then: Well, yeah, there must have been millions caught away from home when the Change happened. I suppose people would come up with a nickname.

"I've got to warn you though, we don't have any food to spare. Barely enough for our own."

Havel nodded. He'd expected nothing different. This was hard country, well away from the farming and ranching areas further west and south. The locals could probably survive on hunting and fishing until winter, but not many casual passersby could.

"We're fixed, for now," he said. "Got plenty of meat."

Several of the men stiffened with suspicion. Already? Havel thought, and went on aloud: "Elk, venison and bear"-he touched the long wound that ran across his forehead and into his scalp-"which the bear brought on himself. We could trade some jerky for flour or rice or beans."

The little band of townsfolk relaxed. Their leader looked at the swords the travelers all carried, and the bows. Will had rigged tubular scabbards at the right rear of their saddles, and he and Luanne and Havel were using them for the long spears-lances-he'd made. He'd also done up round plywood shields, convex circles rimmed in metal and covered in elk hide; Signe and Astrid had painted the head of a snarling bear on each, quite skillfully.

"You folks are together then? Looks like you're loaded for bear!"

That brought a few chuckles from his townsmen; Havel smiled thinly-it still hurt to move his face much. "We ran into some survivalists, original-sovereign types. They seemed to think they could do anything they wanted, now that things are Changed. We're taking precautions to avoid another incident like that."

The leader's eyes took in their various bruises and contusions and spat eloquently. "Those crazy bastards? What happened?"

Havel shrugged. "Coyotes have to eat too, so we didn't bury the bodies," he said, and got another, louder chuckle. "We'd like to camp for a few days and work on our gear before we move on. We're heading towards Lewiston. If anyone wants to trade, we can do farrier work or such."

A nod, and the leader leaned on his ax. "We have a couple of horses that could use shoeing. Head on down that lane, there's a campground by the river and some cabins- use 'em if you want, but the plumbing's not working. There's some other folks who got caught on the road staying there, too."

Havel circled the small pine tree, the shield up, left foot advanced. It was starting to feel more natural, and it was what the book said you should do on foot. He had the practice sword up, point towards the tree; it had the same weight and balance as the other weapon Will had made, but it was blunt.

With a huhhh! of expelled breath he bounced forward off his right leg, swinging the weapon in a quick whipping cut that landed as his foot did.

Whiiik!

Another ragged chip flew off the trunk at neck height; he hit the tree with the shield, punching it, then stabbed under the lower rim.

The basics are the same as a knife, he thought. You have to be able to put it where you want it.

Still, he wished he had more than a couple of books to go on. He was getting better at attacking, but to learn the counters he needed a trained partner.

An instructor would be even better; he was afraid of drilling bad habits into his reflexes.

He backed off from the tree, broad chest heaving as sweat rolled down his taut skin, pale in contrast to the permanent tan of his face and arms.

Finding an instructor would be a fantastic stroke of luck. People who had the leisure to study swordcraft usually didn't end up in backwoods Idaho this time of year. Of course, he'd already had a tremendous run of luck, compared to ninety-nine in every hundred human beings alive when the Change happened; the crash, being somewhere with not too many people, surviving the deadly confused little fight at the cabin, the bear's claws within an inch of taking off his face:

Ken Larsson had explained it: When nearly everybody died, any survivor would have to be either fantastically lucky, or very able, or both. By this time next year, anyone living was going to be convinced that they could roll sixes from now until Doomsday.

Havel shivered. "The problem is," he murmured to himself, "that the dice have no memory." A run of luck could stop any instant. "And we've already had Doomsday."

"Boss," Will Hutton said.

Havel leaned the sword against his leg while he worked and stretched his right hand and arm. You felt every impact all the way up to your shoulder when you worked this way.

"Yeah, Will?" he said.

They'd camped in another tree-dotted meadow, well away from the river and from the other stranded wayfarers who'd ended up here. There was room for their horses, and for setting up a clothesline, and digging a latrine; they'd pitched the single big tent the Huttons had had along, too, as well as taking over a couple of the cabins. The air was wet and cold and smelled of green; in a warmer climate the whole place might be getting pretty squalid by now, but they didn't intend to stay much longer.

Have to get another tent, Havel thought. We need more privacy, it's bad for morale to crowd each other too much when we're on the road – we're in each other's pockets all day as is. One tent per family, at least.

"Got some more people interested in joinin' up," Hutton said.

He jerked his thumb towards the notional edge of their camp, where a cluster stood and waited.

"Couple of 'em look hopeful, I'd say."

"They'd be the first," Havel muttered, hanging up the practice weapon on a nail driven into the tree above head height. "OK, Will, send them in as soon as I'm ready."

It was chilly, but he'd been working stripped to the waist; sweat stung and itched in the healing wound on his forehead, and just plain itched in his new beard-one reason he'd never grown one before. The muscles of his arms burned-the shield didn't move as much as the sword, but it was heavier-and his right hand felt as if a semi had run over it. A faint line of new callus was appearing, all around the inner side of his thumb and forefinger and the web between.

Now he wiped himself down with a towel and shrugged into a shirt, buttoning it as he walked over to the table they'd set up for talking to the candidates-the similarity to a job interview seemed to reassure people. Once there he sat and laid the shield and saber across it, conscious of the position of the hilt and that of his puukko. You didn't take chances these days, and some of the people stuck here were visibly crazy.

The first candidate was a tall, thin, thirtyish woman with bold features and coarse abundant reddish brown hair- she'd probably been thin before the Change, too, though less so. She was dressed in moderately expensive outdoor clothes, which she'd managed to get or keep fairly clean, and hiker's boots.

"Pam Arnstein," she said, offering a hand; it was firm and dry, and she gave a single squeeze while meeting his eyes. "I understand you're looking for people to join your group?"

He nodded: "Useful people, for mutual help here and where we intend to settle, in Oregon." He explained the rules. "Now convince me, Ms. Arnstein."

"I'm a veterinarian-worked at the San Diego Zoo. I was visiting relatives here in Idaho, then driving for recreation."

Now that would be useful, he thought; he liked her calm, too, and the absence of pleading. For practical purposes, a vet can handle a lot of human illness. We need a medico.

"Why didn't you get back to the relatives?" he said.

"They have small children. I didn't think they could afford to help me, and they would try if I asked, so I won't ask."

Excellent, he thought-and he was fairly sure she was telling the truth, too.

He questioned her a bit more-she hiked and did horseback trekking, rock climbing and hang gliding, was divorced and childless.

"And I do Renaissance fencing," she said. "With HACA-that's what the group is called."

At his raised eyebrow she went on: "Cut-and-thrust backsword with targe, rapier-and-targe-a targe is a small shield, rather like this one,"-she tapped the one resting on the table-"sword and buckler-a buckler is a smaller metal shield with a one-handed grip-and rapier and dagger. I got into it when I was doing amateur theatricals at UC San Diego, decided to try the real thing, and it's been one of my hobbies for years. The weapons are substantially similar to those you have on your table there."

"OK, Ms. Arnstein, you just sold me. I'm going to pass you on to our experts to check on what you said, and you can demonstrate that fencing stuff to me, but provisionally you're in."

She looked towards the cookfire and swallowed painfully.

"Perhaps you could get something to eat first. Game stew with some wild plants is all we have, but there's enough."

The next candidate was a logger, a little younger than Havel and an inch taller, a husky brown-haired, blue-eyed man. He and his young wife and their toddler daughter looked surprisingly well fed.

"You the bossman of the Bearkiller outfit?" he asked.

Havel grinned inwardly at that as he nodded and shook hands and introduced himself. He'd been thinking idly that they should have a name for the group. Apparently Signe's artistic talents had settled the matter; the bear heads on the shields were quite dramatic. That, and the boiled-down skull of the bear that had nearly killed them all resting outside the door of the tent. Perhaps he should do up a flag, and put the bear skull on top of the pole.

"I'm Josh Sanders; my wife Annie, and our Megan."

"Cornhusker?" Havel said.

Sanders had the rasping accent; he also had a grip like a vise. He wasn't trying it on, just damned strong.

"Daddy had a farm down to Booneville," Josh Sanders said.

Havel recognized the name; it was a small town in southwestern Indiana, which confirmed his guess.

"Just a little place, though; he worked construction, too. I lumberjacked some in the woods there, and then up here, up in the Panhandle, and Annie taught school for her church before the baby came; she's Montana-born, grew up on a ranch over to Missoula. I like a place where I can hunt and fish. I've been fishing here, and hunting, but only small stuff, with a slingshot-I know rifles, but not bows. Been keeping us fed since the Change, but only just. The folk in town here are sort of standoffish, not that I blame them."

Better and better, Havel thought.

The lumberjack's yellow-haired wife looked healthy and competent, and scared silly but hiding it well. He caught a glimpse of a tattoo under the man's sleeve, part of an anchor.

"Squid?" he said.

Josh smiled: "Guess it still shows. One hitch out of high school-Seabee. Did a fair bit of construction." The Seabees were the Navy's combat engineers. "You'd be a Jarhead, is my guess."

"Semper Fi," Havel nodded.

"Mind my asking, how did you get the-" His finger traced the place of Havel 's stitched wound on his own forehead.

"Got into a close-and-personal argument with a bear, about five days ago."

"What happened?"

"Bear tastes a lot like pork, but a bit gamier. Better in a stew, or marinated in vinegar."

Josh whistled, then nodded as Havel explained the terms: strict discipline, working together, and a possible ultimate share-out in Oregon.

"All right," Havel said. "One last thing."

Southern Indiana was white-sheet country not so long ago, settled from Kentucky and Virginia originally. Let's check.

He pointed. "Will Hutton here is the number two man in this outfit. Got any problems taking his orders?"

"My daddy might have, but the Navy knocked out any of that horseshit left in me," Josh said. "Taking orders doesn't bother me. As long as they aren't damned stupid orders, all the time."

The last candidate was a fortysomething man with receding dirty-blond hair, long and stringy. Havel 's nose wrinkled slightly at his stale sour smell; the river was right there, and the town wasn't short of soap yet, and there was plenty of firewood to heat water. He had a beaten-down-looking wife who looked older than he did and wasn't; she'd been massive before the Change, and sagged like a deflated balloon now. Their children were twelve and ten and eight, and looked as if they hadn't eaten in quite a while; unnaturally quiet, in fact.

Loser, Havel thought, noting the yellow nicotine stain on his fingers-he must be going through withdrawal now, a six-pack-a-day man with no tobacco at all. His hands trembled, too, and there was a tracery of broken veins in his nose and cheeks. Alky.

Will Hutton stood behind the man, and silently mouthed the word trash over his shoulder.

And I agree with you, Havel thought. OK, but there's no reason to be brutal about it.

"I'm sorry, Mr.-"

"Billy Waters, sir, and please-my children-"

"This isn't a charity, Mr. Waters. We may be able to spare a bowl for them."

And I'd watch them eat it, to make sure you didn't.

Well behind Havel, Eric and Signe and Luanne were practicing at a mark they'd set up, passing the hunting bow back and forth and laughing together. Waters's eyes lit on them.

"Look, sir, I worked for Red Wolf Bows in Missouri," he said desperately. "A few years back, till they laid me off. I can make you more bows, if you get me some tools! Arrows too, and do fletching."

Havel halted with his mouth open to speak the words of dismissal. Hutton's eyebrows went up.

"Get Astrid, would you, Will?" Havel said. "She'll be able to check what this gentleman says."

Bill Waters looked as if he'd like to be indignant when a girl in her early teens showed up to grill him, but his eyes went a little wide when he saw the bow she carried.

"Red Wolf?" Astrid said to Havel. "Yes, they make bows-modern-traditional, mostly, custom orders for hunting bows. Recurves. Good quality, but pricey."

Her sniff told what she thought of Mr. Waters. He sensed it, and went on: "I was on the floor two years, miss, did every step or helped with it," he said earnestly. "It's a small shop, four men, and I helped 'em all. Hunted some myself with a bow."

Havel 's eyebrows went up; for a wonder, the man wasn't pretending he'd been head craftsman, rather than dogsbody and assistant. That was probably a measure of his desperation.

"You don't look like you've had much luck hunting here," he pointed out.

"Ain't got no bow here, sir."

And couldn't get anyone to lend you one, Havel thought. Well, I wouldn't have lent you fifty cents, and I'd bet anything that when the Change hit you got drunk and stayed that way until you ran out of booze.

Havel had the traditional disdain for hand-to-mouth drifters to be expected in someone who came of four generations of hard-rock miners-unionized workingmen intensely proud of their dangerous, highly skilled labor. It had been amplified in the Corps, where there was no excuse for failure. He was surprised this specimen had ever learned any sort of trade, but perhaps he'd been on the wagon more when he was younger.

Astrid asked a question, her voice sharp. Waters answered, and an incomprehensible conversation followed involving tillering and laminations, hotboxes and clamps, hand-shock and finger pinch.

"Will," Havel said, after a few sentences. "Take Astrid and Mr. Waters off, and discuss bowmaking, would you? And check him out on the target."

He waited, thinking and trying not to listen to the occasional whimpering of Waters's children, or to notice the expression of hopeless pessimism on his wife's face, born of far too many broken promises and failed hopes.

Instead he paged through a book of Will's, an illustrated History of Cavalry, by two Polacks named Grbasic and Vuksic-or Grabass and Youpuke, as he mentally christened them. They certainly seemed to know their field, though according to them a Pole on horseback was the next thing to an Archangel with a flaming sword.

I wish I'd read more of this sort of thing before the Change, he thought wistfully. It's interesting, and now all I have time to do is mine it for the useful parts.

He was looking at the equipment of a Polish pancerny horseman of the seventeenth century when the three returned; as Hutton had said, it looked simple and practical, enough so that they had some prospect of making an equivalent set of kit.

"Excuse us for a moment, please," Havel said.

Waters stood back by his wife and children as the three spoke; both the adults stared in mute desperation at the conversation they couldn't hear, and flinched when eyes went their way.

"He can shoot, Mike," Astrid said. "Better if his hands weren't shaking, but he's quite good-not as good as me, but better than Signe, on moving targets. And he really does know how to make bows. Traditional bows, not compounds-traditional forms with modern materials, that is."

Will shrugged. "He can handle woodworker's tools," he said grudgingly, and sounding faintly surprised. "I think I could pick up most of what he knows, in a couple or three months. We'll have to sort of experiment to find out how to use horn and sinew and bone glue instead of fancy wood laminates and fiberglass and epoxy anyways, but we got Astrid's bow to work from."

More quietly: "He's still trash, though, Boss. Bad news."

"Granted." Havel sighed. "We'll have to give him a try, though; long-term, it's a skill set we really need. I'll put the fear of God in him and we'll see how it works; we can always cut him loose."

Waters began babbling as soon as Havel walked towards him, and then cut it short as the younger man nodded to his wife: "Mrs. Waters, why don't you go over there to our cookfire? Angelica Hutton handles our supplies, and I think she could find you and your children something to eat, and help you get settled here."

An incredulous smile showed, just for an instant, what Jane Waters had looked like in her last year of high school, and she hustled away moving the children before her as if afraid he'd change his mind. Havel jerked his head, and walked out of hearing distance of the others with Waters beside him. Certain things had to be done in private for decency's sake.

"Sir, let me tell you how grateful-"

"Can it," Havel said.

He didn't raise his voice or gesture, but judging from the doglike grin of submission Waters at least knew a hard man when he met one. The problem with his kind was that the lessons usually didn't stick:

"Waters, I know you'd say anything you thought I wanted to hear right now because you're hungry, so save it."

The older man made a pathetic attempt at dignity. "Mr. Havel, a man has to feed his children."

"That's true. And you must have been some sort of a man once; you learned a trade, at least, and held a steady job for a while. But now you're a loser and a drunk-I know the signs. So let's make things real clear. You listening?"

He waited until the man's eyes met his, and he could see that-at least for the moment-he'd stopped running through the perpetual list of excuses that were probably the background music of his life.

"I'm taking you on against my better judgment, and this is a taut outfit. I don't tolerate whining, shirking or dirt. You and your family will keep yourselves clean, you will work, and you will obey all the rules. You're low dog in this pack until you show you deserve better, so you'll also obey anyone I appoint to strawboss you, including that damned orange cat over there if I say so, cheerfully and without complaint. You're here on sufferance. The first time you screw up, or go on a bender and slap your wife and kids around, or any trash tricks like that, I will personally beat the living shit out of you. The second time I will beat the living shit out of you and throw you out on your ass. Is all this clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"And don't call me sir. I work for a living. Boss will do, if you have to use something besides my name. After you've eaten, you can bring your gear over. Remember what I said about the rules, because if it isn't all ready and all clean by tomorrow morning, you're not coming with us. Move!"